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Brabham claims pole at Mosport

David Brabham fended off Simon Pagenaud to put Highcroft Acura on pole for the Mosport Park round of the American Le Mans Series

Buoyed by having ended the De Ferran team's winning streak at Elkhart Lake a fortnight ago, Brabham was dominant for much of prototype qualifying, leading the way by a second after his initial run and remaining on top thereafter.

Pagenaud gradually gained ground, and might have snatched pole away but for a violent ride over a kerb near the end of qualifying. The Frenchman had closed to within 0.074 seconds of Brabham, but had to settle for second.

"I don't think we ever showed what we could really do in practice, so we weren't too worried about that, but we knew it would be close in qualifying," said Brabham. "We were so, so close, and it just shows what a great race we're going to have."

The Dyson Lola-Mazdas took a commanding one-two in LMP2, although they will be split by the LMP1 Intersport Lola on the grid. Marino Franchitti claimed a second straight class pole in third overall, while the championship leading Fernandez Acura only managed third in class and sixth in the outright list.

Rahal Letterman BMW repeated the dominant GT2 form it had shown at Elkhart Lake, with Dirk Muller beating team-mate Joey Hand to class pole by 0.129s.

"It's a perfect result for BMW again," said Muller. "It didn't look so good yesterday [in practice] but we really went deep into the car, worked hard and it gave us a really good car. It's been perfect."

The two works Corvettes will line up behind the BMWs, as the usual Porsche and Ferrari front-runners all ran into problems. Wolf Henzler was third in qualifying for Farnbacher Loles Porsche, but will have to start at the back. He was due to be demoted under series rules as his team-mate Dirk Werner missed today's sessions to race in the Montreal Grand-Am event, and then had his times disallowed for a rear wing infringement anyway.

Although the championship-leading Flying Lizard Porsche of Patrick Long and Jorg Bergmeister only managed fifth on the class grid, it is in far better shape than its title rival Risi Ferrari, which sat out the session after a heavy practice crash for Jaime Melo.

Pos  Cl   Drivers                    Car                Time
 1.  P1   Brabham/Sharp              Acura ARX 02a      1m05.323s
 2.  P1   de Ferran/Pagenaud         Acura ARX 02a      1m05.397s
 3.  P2   Leitzinger/Franchitti      Lola B09 86 Mazda  1m06.379s
 4.  P1   Field/Field                Lola B06/10        1m06.764s
 5.  P2   Dyson/Smith                Lola B09 86 Mazda  1m06.853s
 6.  P2   Fernandez/Diaz             Acura ARX-01B      1m06.944s
 7.  P1   Burgess/McMurry            Lola B06/10        1m10.613s
 8.  P2   van der Steur/Pecorari     Radical SR9        1m11.391s
 9.  GT2  Mueller/Milner             BMW E92 M3         1m17.528s
10.  GT2  Hand/Auberlen              BMW E92 M3         1m17.657s
11.  GT2  Beretta/Gavin              Corvette C6.R      1m17.959s
12.  GT2  Magnussen/O'Connell        Corvette C6.R      1m18.309s
13.  GT2  Bergmeister/Long           Porsche 911 RSR    1m18.361s
14.  GT2  Farnbacher/James           Panoz Esperante    1m18.778s
15.  GT2  Murry/Robertson/Robertson  Doran Ford GT-R    1m19.208s
16.  GT2  Feinberg/Hall              Dodge Viper        1m19.746s
17.  GT2  Melo/Kaffer                Ferrari 430
18.  GT2  Law/van Overbeek           Porsche 911 RSR    1m19.475s
19.  GT2  Henzler/Werner             Porsche 911 RSR

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